TENNIS – Viktoria Azarenka celebrated her 25th birthday on 31th July but she could not celebrate it with a win as she lost against Venus Williams in the WTA Stanford. Diego Sampaolo
Venus converted a break point in the 10th game to clinch the first set with 6-4. The second set went on serve in the first seven games until Venus broke in the eighth game of the second set to pull away to a 5-3 lead. The US legend served for the set but she wasted two match points at 6-5 on Azarenka’s serve. The second set came down to the tie-break where Venus stormed to 5-0 before closing out with 7-1 to wrap up the match in straight sets with 6-4 7-6 (7-1) in one hour and 42 minutes.
Venus beat Vika in straight sets in all of their four matches. The next rival for Venus will be German Andrea Petkovic. It will be their fourth head-to-match between Williams and Petkovic. The US star leads 2-1 over the German who won their only match after Venus was forced to withdraw.
Ana Ivanovic swept aside Canadian qualifier Carol Zhao 6-1 6-1 to set up an intriguing quarter final match against Serena Williams. They will meet for the seventh time in their careers: Serena leads 5-1 but they tie 1-1 this year: Ana won for the first time over Serena at last January’s Australian Open, but Serena beat the Serb in Rome.
Serena and Venus could meet in the semifinal.
Ivanovic will return to the top ten with her Thursday’s win. Earlier this week the former Number 1 player took a re-match over German Sabine Lisicki who defeated the Serbian player in the third round at Wimbledon. At Stanford Ivanovic bounced back from a 1-4 deficit in the first set to win the match in straight sets with 7-6 (7-2) 6-1. This match was marked by Lisicki’s world record serve as she hit her serve at 210.8 km/h breaking the previous record set by Venus Williams ‘s record set at the 2007 US Open
The US Tournament is Ivanovic’s first tournament with her new coach Dejan Petrovic.
“We are getting further into the tournaments to play each other. It’s going to be a tough challenge but at the same time it’s a good challenge because, when you are starting out with a new coach, it’s good to see where you are at and what you have to work on”, said Ivanovic.
Angelique Kerber overcame a bagel in the second set to edge Belgian Coco Vandeweghe 7-6 (7-4) 0-6 6-2 to set up a quarter final match against Garbine Muguruza who followed up her three-set win over Dominika Cibulkova with 6-2 4-6 6-2 with a victory over Daniela Hantuchova with 6-4 6-4. Kerber won their only head-to-head match
The other quarter final will pit Varvara Lepchenko against Sasha Vickery.
